Electronic communications for both business and personal use have increased substantially in recent years. In addition to the number of communications increasing, the number of available communication mediums has also increased. In addition to email communications and telephone communications, additional forms of communication have become common in recent years, including instant messaging, social network messaging and commenting, message board posting, text messaging, and Voice Over Internet Protocol communications.
Many of these electronic communications are sent from businesses to individuals. For example, a tracking number for a package being shipped by AMAZON.COM to a purchaser may be provided to the purchaser via an email, or a flight number and other information for an upcoming flight reserved by a customer on an AMERICAN AIRLINES website is sent to the customer by email.
Increasingly, businesses are sending a large number of emails to a customer or user, such as from various, different divisions of the business (e.g., shipping and customer service). Each of these emails is often sent by the business using different email addresses. For example, FACEBOOK often uses automatically-generated email addresses for each email message it sends to a user.